COMMENT: By ignoring the outcry Bristol Rovers are complicit

IT really shouldn’t have to come to this, explaining to a grown adult why using the word holocaust to describe underperformance in a football match is wrong, but here we are.

That the man’s employer then does not comment, despite being vocal about showing racism the red card, also speaks volumes.

For someone who claims to be well read and who quotes Nietzsche as a self-styled football philosopher, Mr Barton’s use of language is beyond disappointing. Set in the context of a rise in anti-Semitism, or as David Baddiel succinctly describes it ‘the racism that sneaks past you’ – it is a dangerous use of language by someone in the public eye.

Replace holocaust with lynching in the quote, or with genocide, how does it feel then? By diminishing the slaughter of millions of innocent people to a throwaway comment about how his footballers can’t perform consistently on the pitch Mr Barton shows at best ignorance, at worst a total disregard for one of the darkest moments in human history.

I have a whole part of my family tree cut off at the branch, distant great-uncles and aunts wiped out. My grandfather grew up in Liverpool, just across the city from where Mr Barton was raised, at a time when Jewish people were interred on the Isle of Man and relatives were going missing in Europe. The scars of the holocaust will never heal.

In 2012 Mr Barton tweeted: “Footballers must be socially aware and not afraid to ask the ‘race’ Q” in relation to high profile colleagues like Rio and Anton Ferdinand refusing to support a Kick it Out campaign because they felt aggrieved at a lack of action regarding issues they had raised. Does the ‘race Q’ extend to anti-semitism and a poor use of language in 2021?

The silence from the club itself is beginning to to sound like a roar, for a club which proudly backs Show Racism the Red card, which hosts antidiscrimination events and which prides itself on inclusivity, Bristol Rovers lack of comment is shameful. To edit the video, repost it and say nothing is just not good enough.

As David Baddiel says in his book Jews Don’t Count: “We live in a culture now where impact is more important than intent; where how things are taken is more significant than how they are meant. You have to listen to the people being talked about rather than the talker – and the power, throughout history, has tended to be with the talker, the person with the platform, rather than the talked about, who are usually the ones affected.”

In short, whatever point Mr Barton was trying to make isn’t the issue here, the impact of what he did say is. By ignoring the outcry Bristol Rovers are complicit in the insult.

Perhaps it is time for the people at Bristol Rovers to pick up some history books and a dictionary and once again remember that footballers, managers and clubs need to be socially aware.